I have been a scientist in the field of the earth and environmental sciences for 33 years, specializing in geologic disposal of nuclear waste, energy-related research, subsurface transport and environmental clean-up of heavy metals. I consult on strategic planning for the DOE, EPA/State environmental agencies, and industry including companies that own nuclear, hydro, wind farms, large solar arrays, coal and gas plants. I also consult for EPA/State environmental agencies and industry on clean-up of heavy metals from soil and water. For over 20 years I have been a member of Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the NRDC, the Environmental Defense Fund and many others, as well as professional societies including the America Nuclear Society, the American Chemical Society and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

Like We've Been Saying -- Radiation Is Not A Big Deal

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has finally admitted that we can't use the LNT hypothesis to predict cancer from low doses of radiation. Now the Japanese people can start eating their own food again and stop being as afraid. Source: United Nations

A very big report came out last month with very little fanfare. It concluded what we in nuclear science have been saying for decades – radiation doses less than about 10 rem (0.1 Sv) are no big deal. The linear no-threshold dose hypothesis (LNT) does not apply to doses less than 10 rem (0.1 Sv), which is the region encompassing background levels around the world, and is the region of most importance to nuclear energy, most medical procedures and most areas affected by accidents like Fukushima.

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) (UNSCEAR 2012) submitted the report that, among other things, states that uncertainties at low doses are such that UNSCEAR “does not recommend multiplying low doses by large numbers of individuals to estimate numbers of radiation-induced health effects within a population exposed to incremental doses at levels equivalent to or below natural background levels.” (UNDOC/V1255385)

You know, like everyone’s been doing since Chernobyl. Like everyone’s still doing with Fukushima.

Finally, the world may come to its senses and not waste time on the things that aren’t hurting us and spend time on the things that are. And on the people that are in real need. Like the infrastructure and economic destruction wrought by the tsunami, like cleaning up the actual hot spots around Fukushima, like caring for the tens of thousands of Japanese living in fear of radiation levels so low that the fear itself is the only thing that is hurting them, like seriously preparing to restart their nuclear fleet and listening to the IAEA and the U.S. when we suggest improvements.

The advice on radiation in this report will clarify what can, and cannot, be said about low dose radiation health effects on individuals and large populations. Background doses going from 250 mrem (2.5 mSv) to 350 mrem (3.5 mSv) will not raise cancer rates or have any discernable effects on public health. Likewise, background doses going from 250 mrem (2.5 mSv) to 100 mrem (1 mSv) will not decrease cancer rates or effect any other public health issue.

Note – although most discussions are for acute doses (all at once) the same amount as a chronic dose (metered out over a longer time period like a year) is even less effecting. So 10 rem (0.1 Sv) per year, either as acute or chronic, has no observable effect, while 10 rem per month might.

UNSCEAR also found no observable health effects from last year’s nuclear accident in Fukushima. No effects.

The Japanese people can start eating their own food again, and moving back into areas only lightly contaminated with radiation levels that are similar to background in many areas of the world like Colorado and Brazil.

The huge waste of money that is passing for clean-up now by just moving around dirt and leaves (NYTimes) can be focused on clean-up of real contamination near Fukushima using modern technologies. The economic and psychological harm wrought by the wrong-headed adoption of linear no-threshold dose effects for doses less than 0.1 Sv (10 rem) has been extremely harmful to the already stressed population of Japan, and to continue it would be criminal.

To recap LNT, the Linear No-Threshold Dose hypothesis is a supposition that all radiation is deadly and there is no dose below which harmful effects will not occur. Double the dose, double the cancers. First put forward after WWII by Hermann Muller, and adopted by the world body, including UNSCEAR, its primary use was as a Cold War bargaining chip to force cessation of nuclear weapons testing. The fear of radiation that took over the worldview was a side-effect (Did Muller Lie?).

Background Radiation Differences on Annual Cancer Mortality Rates/100,000 for each U.S. State over a 17-Year Period. There is no correlation with radiation dose. States with significantly higher doses, greater than 2.7 mSv/year (270 mrem/year) like Colorado, have lower cancer rates than States with much lower average doses like Georgia, and vice versa. (from Frigerio and Stowe, 1976 with recent radon data)

Of course, doubling the dose doesn’t double the cancers below 10 rem/yr (0.1 Sv/yr). It has no effect at all. The millions of nuclear workers that have been monitored closely for 50 years have no higher cancer mortality than the general population but have had several to ten times the average dose. People living in New Mexico and Wyoming have twice the annual dose as those in Los Angeles, but have lower cancer rates. These cannot occur if LNT were true, because LNT states this could not occur.

There are no observable effects in any population group around the planet that suggest LNT is true below 10 rem/yr (0.1 Sv/yr) even in areas of the Middle East, Brazil and France where natural background doses exceed 10 rem/yr (0.1 Sv/yr).

Although rarely discussed, LNT does not take into account the organisms immune system, biological recovery time between doses or other relevant mechanisms that operate at low doses on an actual organism versus cells in a petri dish.

UNSCEAR is an independent body of international experts that has met regularly since 1955 and helped establish radiation as the best understood, though weakest, carcinogenic agent in the world through its studies of atomic bomb survivors, the effects of the Chernobyl accident, industrial radiological accidents, and medical radiation treatment.

Many of us have been at them for years to stop procrastinating and prevaricating on something so important that the inaction itself is harmful. This report is a welcome change. The report, approved by the United Nations General Assembly, will now serve to guide all countries of the world in setting their own national radiation safety policies.

This is incredibly important to Japan where national guideline changes have been horribly over-reactive in response to Fukushima, especially for food, using LNT in a way it should not be used.

Accepted global limits on radioactivity levels in foods is 1000 Bq/kg (1,200 Bq/kg in the U.S.). Dominated by cesium-137 and Sr-90, these levels were set by organizations like the IAEA and UNSCEAR after decades of study. Because of public radiation fears broadcast in the press after the Fukushima accident, Japan cut the limit in half hoping it would have a calming influence. But the level of fear remained high, so Tokyo lowered the limits to one-tenth of the international standards.

This was supposed to induce calm? Telling the public that radiation is even more deadly than they thought? That their food is toxic? Were they nuts?

This has had the unintended consequence of making people even more afraid of what they are eating, moving safe foods into the scary category and limiting food exports, causing even further economic and social damage.

Suddenly, all sorts of normally safe foods are now banned. Wild mushrooms from Aomori Prefecture are now banned because they have cesium levels of about 120 Bq/kg. This cesium has nothing to do with Fukushima, it’s the same type as is in everyone’s food around the world, and it wouldn’t have rated a second look before the accident (Japan’s Contamination Limits Way Too Low).

The Japanese people should not be punished for nothing. But these new results and the UNSCEAR reports demonstrate that they are being punished. There was no reason to lower the rad limits on food, especially after the short-lived nuclides have long decayed away. One of the incorrect assumptions was that people in Japan would be eating only contaminated food, which is quite wrong. The international limits were set for very good reasons, lowering them makes no sense except to further hurt farmers and consumers in Japan.

UNSCEAR’s chair Wolfgang Weiss stated that no radiation health effects had been observed in Japan among the public, workers or children in the area of the damaged nuclear power plants, in keeping with studies already published by the World Health Organization and Tokyo University. Doses of radiation received by people near the damaged power plant were so low that no discernible health effect could be expected.

The Japanese government, for all its failures, did the right thing in evacuating Fukushima Prefecture quickly and by preventing contaminated food and water from being consumed. This was in stark contrast to Chernobyl where the Soviets intentionally kept the public in the dark.

Ingestion of the short-lived isotope iodine-131, with its well-known risk of thyroid cancer when absorbed in the thyroid glands of children and young people, was the only major radiation-related health effect of the Chernobyl accident on the public. And the Soviets could have prevented that by acting quickly and openly. Of course, the Soviets didn’t much care about the public.

This will not happen in Japan. Iodine-131, with a half-life of only 8 days, decayed away in a few months following the accident and no one was found to have ingested any significant amount.

According to the reports, six Fukushima workers received total doses of over 0.25 Sv (25 rem) during their time fighting the emergency, while 170 workers received doses between 0.1 and 0.25 Sv (10 to 25 rem). None have shown ill effects and most likely never will. Radiation played no role in the coincidental deaths of six Fukushima workers in the time since the accident, who died from accidents, e.g., being crushed by debris or being swept out to sea.

Yes, there are health effects of radiation above 0.1 Sv (10 rem) that statistically increase up to 1 Sv (100 rem) but even in this higher range it’s hard to see them without a big enough population. The only radiation events on this scale, where large populations received 0.1 Sv (10 rem) to 1 Sv (100 rem) have been the atomic bomb blasts from World War II.

The effects of radiation only start to become clear at high acute absorbed doses of over 1 Sv (100 rem), and even then it is necessary to eliminate other potential causes before radiation can be unequivocally said to be the cause, advised UNSCEAR.

What this means for nuclear waste disposal is even more dramatic, but more on that later!

In the end, if we don’t reorient ourselves on what is true about radiation and not on the fear, we will fail the citizens of Japan, Belarus and the Ukraine, and we will continue to spend time and money on the wrong things. I’m sure the anti-nuke ideologues and conspiracy theorists will not accept these U.N. reports, but then…they don’t like the United Nations anyway.

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atomikrabbit (aka Jerry Cutler): Every academic discipline has examples of those who sell their integrity to the powers that be, and nowhere is this more pervasive than in the fields related to the nuclear industry, with the possible exception of economics. If you think that having a Phd behind your name should give anyone carte blanche to get away with blatant falsehoods and bogus methodology you should think again.

Well nice attempt to insinuate that atomikrabbit is is Dr. Cuttler. You’re incorrect, but I guess when you don’t have a legitimate argument you must resort to these tactics.

Do you have a legitimate arguments against anything Jerry Cutler has done or said other than an attempt to now insinuate that he is somehow bought off by a big bad “nuclear industry”? What is the nuclear industry anyway? I work in nuclear power and I am yet to find a big bad nuclear industry or lobby. There are companies that own nuclear plants, but they also own a lot of fossil fuel plants. Just please point me to any evidence of a nuclear industry that is somehow the puppet master behind international scientific bodies but yet can barely get plants built in North America.

“If you think that having a Phd behind your name should give anyone carte blanche to get away with blatant falsehoods and bogus methodology you should think again”

If you think that having an echo chamber between your ears qualifies you to hold forth on a topic you know so little about, think again. Except people like you never do – their belief system is religious, not rational.

How do YOU know who attomikrabbit is? Are you guys personally acquainted? That is the problem with online forums, they are anonymous and subject to corporate/state interests using armies of internet trolls, many of whom create multiple fake “personas” complete with photos and detailed profiles, to clog up the online comment forums on certain topics for many news websites in order to further their “perception management” ends.

“There are companies that own nuclear plants, but they also own a lot of fossil fuel plants. ” Precisely! And these same companies are largely owned by big banks that own each other, and they all own shares of weapons manufacturers, chemical companies, media conglomerates, Etc, etc, etc. They employ armies of faithful quislings , and one of the primary purposes for many of these quislings is to attempt to influence public opinion on certain hot button topics.

Do you honestly believe their are no financial links between the owners of Forbes and the owners of these other interests? Do you honestly think that Forbes would employ a writer who did not take a pro nuke stance? Get my drift?

I am acquainted with both atomikrabbit and with Dr. Jerry Cuttler. I can assure you that they are two different individuals. It is amusing to me to have someone who comments with a pseudonym to state something like the following: “That is the problem with online forums, they are anonymous and subject to corporate/state interests using armies of internet trolls, many of whom create multiple fake “personas” complete with photos and detailed profiles, …”

Feel free to believe what you want to believe, but I have a large number of friends and acquaintances that are not industry stooges, but who still agree that nuclear energy is the very best energy option that we have available.

Some of us gained that knowledge with personal, deep experience. It is really hard to convince someone who has spent about 800 days submerged within 200 feet of a nuclear reactor that he should fear that clean, reliable power source. Heck, I’ve actually hugged a reactor – several times during RC inspections.

You need to check your premises about the interests of The Establishment when it comes to nuclear energy. Despite all of its enormous technical advantages, the US did not start a new nuclear power plant project during the period between 1974 and 2012.

I strongly suspect that a major reason for that lengthy hiatus is that people who sell coal, oil and natural gas, finance that industry, carry ads for that industry, transport the products of that industry and represent that industry in Congress and in the White House do not like the fact that nuclear reactors do not need to buy any of their bulky, expensive, polluting – but high-revenue fuel.

I can testify that a number of business related, “mainstream” publication have no interest in publishing material that describes how fossil fuel interests don’t like nuclear energy competition. Many vested interests prefer the revenues associated with maintaining humanity’s addiction to burning billions of tons of hydrocarbon fuels every year over the far lower revenues (which are also known as “costs” to customers) associated with replacing much of that consumption with fissioning a few thousand tons of uranium or thorium.

I do know who atomikrabbit is. I guess now you will claim that we are co-conspirators in the grand nuclear industry conspiracy.

I don’t know if there are financial links between Forbes and a utility that owns nuclear plants. I don’t really care either since this article is based on peer-reviewed science as presented by the United Nations. But I guess the “nuclear industry” controls the UN, according to you. There is no argument with you because every time someone presents peer reviewed and documented information, you just claim everyone involved in the study is a puppet for the “nuclear industry”. You may be an atheist, but you definitely argue like a religious zealot.

James Conca, Clearly, you have not been following the harrowing health effects on minors in Fukushima Prefecture and surrounding areas. Presently, 40% of all minors are presenting with inflammation, nodules and tumors of the thyroid gland. No health effects? Please research the realities which continue, while 26 out of 47 prefectures in Japan are reporting Cesium tainted levels in municipal water supplies. If there were no health effects, why did special envoy to the UN (Anand Grover) make a special report on Fukushima, criticizing the handling of the radiation catastrophe to the Japanese government for its negligence and inaction after the 3/11/11 disaster which continues to promulgate deleterious health effects, evident in women and children in Fukushima and surrounding areas. Here is the report: http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2012/11/26/un-special-report-on-fukushima-criticizes-handling-of-radiat.html

cathy: According to a draft report of the Fukushima Health Management Survey Group, which is canvassing the prefecture’s 2m residents on their health problems, ultrasound examinations of 38,114 children in Fukushima have so far revealed no evidence of thyroid problems…”

http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2012/08/japan-and-atom

Your link to the article on the Md nurse who went back to Japan only proves Dr. Conca’s point: the health effects are not due to the radiation, they’re caused by the irrational fear of radiation:

“It’s not so much that she sees the physical injuries from radiation. Instead, she sees children’s lives turned upside down.

By the way, I’m married to a Japanese national, lived in Japan for 25 years, raised two daughters and have evacuated them to my home in CA in April of 2012. Your claim of “no health effects” is a farce. Ask any evacuee who has the knowledge and resources to get out of northeastern Japan.